Former Minister for Justice Charlie Flannagan has called on the incoming government to investigate the role of the HSE in sending Irish children to the now disgraced Tavistock gender clinic in the UK.
Responding to news that UK authorities have now put an indefinite ban on the use of puberty blockers for under 18s, Flanagan – who is also a former Minister for Children – posted on X saying, “Investigation in to the role of the @HSELive in the matter of hundreds of Irish children treated at the discredited Tavistock clinic in London needs to be on the agenda of the incoming Irish government.”
Gript previously reported figures released to Independent TD Carol Nolan which revealed that between 2012 and 2022 129 Irish children were referred to the now disgraced gender clinic.
The NHS announced in July 2022 that Tavistock – which facilitated sex-change therapies for children – would be closed down, after an independent review by Dr. Hilary Cass found the clinic’s approach was unsafe, that it overlooked other mental health problems in children, failed to collect data on the safety of puberty blockers, and did not subject the treatments administered to children to normal quality controls.
One of the findings of the Cass report was that staff felt under pressure to adopt an “unquestioning affirmative approach” to children who said they desired to change their sex: a life-changing, sometimes irreversible, set of therapies and procedures.
Yesterday UK authorities placed an indefinite ban on the use of puberty blockers for children under 18 after an expert panel found that there was insufficient evidence that the powerful drugs were safe for use.
The British Government said that, “The Commission on Human Medicines (CHM) has provided independent expert advice that there is currently an unacceptable safety risk in the continued prescription of puberty blockers to children. It recommends indefinite restrictions while work is done to ensure the safety of children and young people.”
Since 2015 238 Irish children were referred to Tavistock which operated a satellite gender clinic out of Crumlin Children’s Hospital in Dublin.
In a chapter of her investigative work Time to Think dedicated to Irish patients of the Tavistock clinic, BBC journalist Hanah Barnes interviewed Dr. Paul Moran and Professor Donal O’Shea of Ireland’s National Gender Service (NGS).
Both have expressed serious concern for the way in which children referred to the Gender Identity Development Service (Gids) at theTavistock clinic in London were treated.
In a report published in the The Times UK, journalist Patrick O’Donoghue quoted Dr. Moran as saying,
“Endocrinologists started noticing that these people were experiencing a lot of problems. A lot of them weren’t ready for this.”
He continued, “Generally, what would happen is the endocrinologist would contact me saying, ‘Listen, I’ve got this kid here, we took him over from Crumlin and he looks very unwell, depressed, or he’s self-harming.’ That’s when we started to notice there’s a problem here with the assessments.”
Shockingly it was reported that in “many cases” Crumlin Children’s Hospital did not have the children’s medical files.
According to the report Prof. O’Shay said that “The social situation was so chaotic that the idea that you would just jump in with hormones and start treating, without social work input, without liaising with the school, the key worker, you know, it was clearly potty,”.
It was also reported that the Tavistock clinic was “peddling unscientific fiction” by advertising “infinite possibilities” in relation to so-called gender identity.
The clinic displayed a character called the “Genderbread person” with the Telegraph claiming that children were “signposted” to “activist group” Gendered Intelligence.